Retrospective design using Liberating Structures

Photo by Alasdair Elmes on Unsplash

2 years ago, in December 2016, I hosted the team's annual retrospective, which I subsequently accompanied with the Agile Rocket Cooperate module. It was a moment of exchanges and sharing that I had built around a Consensus Workshop and a step Appreciative Inquiry so that you can celebrate successes and go on vacation with peace of mind.

This year, I am again asked to intervene in the same context. However, I realize that it is not always easy to innovate over time and that after spending more than a year with a team, there have been activities and workshops that I do not I don't even really know which ones have already been done or not! 🙄

We talk a lot about Liberating Structures lately as engaging facilitation formats, I thought this would be a good opportunity to experiment with them as well as share them with the group for their own future use.

I will describe in this article the Design part of this annual retrospective which will take place at the beginning of 2019.

Context of the request

Here is the raw information with which I start the reflection:

• The retrospective will take place early January due to Calendar constraints
• However, the intention remains the same: to carry out a close of 2018 and an opening on 2019
• The time allotted to me is 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. max
• The group will consist of approximately 40 people
• There is still a doubt about the space that will be available
• All the people making up the team are invited: apprentices, trainees included
• This time is also seen as an opportunity to Team Building and strengthen the group
• The ideas of Celebration and of Pride used the previous time were well appreciated
• The teams have changed since my intervention, there are few instances of collaboration between them
• There is an impression of a too many offers, which makes communication difficult and the whole fuzzy

Note / Reminder: the activity of this team is the provision of training for all employees of their company.

Let's see what we can build from there! 🙂

Design: the frame

Let's start with the definition of the frame.

Timing

The time allotted to me is 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. max

This time, my timing is slightly more restricted than the first time. So that gives me space for about 3 hours of activities. However, I start with the following constraints:

• An introduction of about 5 minutes,
• A closing of ten minutes,
• A break in the middle of about fifteen minutes.

I only have about 2h30 of activities left in reality.

Number of persons

The group will consist of approximately 40 people

40 people is a rather large group. Being the only animator, I have several options:

• Go on activities in subgroups
  • benefits :
    • management of smaller groups at the same time
    • more engaging team dynamics
    • self-regulation within the subgroup
  • constraints :
    • potentially requires common sharing time
    • attention distributed to each group

• Go on full group activities
  • benefits :
    • attention focused on the group, the complete system
    • self-regulation of the group on the instructions
  • constraints :
    • heterogeneous commitment of people, drowned in the group
    • management of multiple discussions within the group

I think that a combination of the 2 remains relevant, to see if this is possible when we go more precisely into the content.

Note: these lists are not intended to be exhaustive, now they appear to me as a sufficient starting point.

Intention

However, the intention remains the same: to carry out a close of 2018 and an opening on 2019 There is an impression of a too many offers, which makes communication difficult and the whole fuzzy

The intent is pretty clear to me: close the 2018 chapter of the activities implemented and take an energized first step into 2019.

• Retrospective 2018 : It is therefore necessary to keep a part allowing to value the work which was carried out throughout the previous year.
• Outlook 2019 : to be able to take the next step, rather than looking at what more we could do, I tend to suggest the opposite, what we could stop doing in order to move towards more simplicity ( hey, wouldn't that be an Agile principle? 😛 ). The intention here would therefore be to move forward with a freer and lighter step rather than dragging along the imponderables of the past.

Let’s go into a bit more content detail now!

Design: content

The ideas of Celebration and of Pride used the previous time were well appreciated

The Spa

During a training day in graphic facilitation with Aurelien Morvant and Laurent Sarrazin, I had the opportunity to discover the SPA which appeared to me as a particularly interesting activity. Indeed, at first the participants work in threes, each having a specific role:

• A coach (A): who will ask a series of questions and only these questions
• A client (B): who will answer the questions
• An observer (C): who will listen to the discussion

The initial questions for the coach that I started with are:

• What do you take away from this year 2018?
• How did you contribute to it?
• What else ?
• What else ?

They will then switch roles so that everyone has the opportunity to experience each role.

In a second step, one of the people (B for example) will position himself with his back to the 2 others as if he were listening to a conversation of these 2, about him. The 2 other people (A and C) are going to express what they were able to retain of the positive answers of (B), which could mark them as much on the level of the words as of the bodily expressions.

It is then a generally pleasant moment for the person who receives this feedback, which warms the heart: the SPA is therefore aptly named! 😛

However, keeping in mind the nevertheless collective dimension of this part, I had to add a sequence of sharing in a complete group to allow a global celebration of the participants.

I then think of having each trio select the 3 main ideas they have retained from their exchanges and we will display them to the whole group as a word cloud.

This time is also seen as an opportunity to Team Building and strengthen the group

This is where we come upon our Liberating Structures. What activities could help me meet my different challenges? My choice then fell on the recommended structures to start with:

Impromptu Networking 

• To trigger the immediate participation of participants
• To help shy people open up and get started

The idea would be to propose 2 questions to condition the participants:

1. Why are you coming to this workshop?
2. What would you be happy to leave with?

Note: the questions are subject to change, let's say these are the initial proposals 😛

TRIZ

• To allow the unspeakable to be expressed and to take the corpses out of the cupboards
• Make room for innovation
• Lay the groundwork for creative destruction by doing the hard work the fun way

It is interesting to see that one of the first examples given for this activity is through the following question:

What should we stop doing to make progress on our deepest purpose?

I think the choice was therefore quite quick to make! 😉 The animation structure is based on a sequence of questions that the group will answer using the 1-2-4-All. The questions I have chosen so far are:

1. What could be worse for you in 2019?
2. How to make this happen?
3. What are you doing today that looks like it?
4. How to stop?

Note: this version goes slightly further than what I had been able to do in my Kick-Off structure, although the idea is essentially the same.

1-2-4-All

• To involve each person in the search for answers
• To create spaces where participants can express themselves without fear and reduce hierarchical and power differences
• To enrich the quality of observations and ideas before they are expressed
• To naturally lead to consensus or shared understanding

It is a very similar process to the Consensus Workshop that is used in TRIZ.

Post Break Energizer

Finally, I wanted to give some movement after the break, keeping in mind this idea of Team Building. So 2 options came to mind, thinking about activities that I probably hadn't done with this group yet:

• Movers and Shapers: to show the impact of an element on an overall group dynamic
• The game of chairs: to show the importance of transparency of objectives for cooperation between people

These will be options to present and see what will seem the most relevant to implement on D-Day! 😉

Proposal

Here is the proposal that I sent in order to have a first feedback from the applicants. We were able to discuss the different parts and this could give them a first idea of what could happen during this session. I was able to obtain some additional information concerning the place and other constraints, which enabled us to make certain structuring choices for the animation.

As mentioned earlier in the article, we have been quite successful in combining sub-group and full-group activities which should allow for movement and engagement at different levels.

Conclusion

Here is an additional article on workshop design that I found interesting to share. I hope that the reflection process can be useful to you for your own workshop designs even if it is quite obvious that it is only one way of doing things, at least my way of doing things 🙂

I will probably write a future article on the progress of this retrospective with my feedback on this first test of Liberating Structures in the field!

With that, I leave you with this last article of the year 2018 and wish you an excellent holiday season!

See you next year 😉